The hobo with a .44 magnum

The peasants in Yugoslavia aren’t happy these days, which provides us with a sideshow and a bit of relief from our worries as we realize that Saipan isn’t as messed up as Kosovo is. That’s one great thing about life: you can always find someone who’s more messed up than you are.

Those of us who thought that NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which was a military alliance built to save Europe from the meanies in Russia) was as obsolete as the Chevy Vega got a bit of a surprise, as NATO essentially invaded a sovereign country, Yugoslavia.

Pundits can argue until they’re blue in their collective faces about the merits of using ka-boom diplomacy to (supposedly) save a bunch of toothless peasants from a bunch of army peasants. The plain fact is that governments–all governments, the United States included–operate by killing people who they don’t like. That’s what governments do. Power comes from the muzzle of a gun.

Anyway, while all these guns are pointed this way and that and we hear the term “smart bomb” more often than we do “smart people,” someone should venture a question: Does the U.S. really want to get Russia miffed?

Imagine that Russia bombed Chiapas, Mexico, to stop the nastiness that the Mexican government is dealing to the locals there. How would Uncle Sam react? We’d be talking major war stuff here.

For its part, then, I doubt NATO running amok in Russia’s neighborhood is going to soothe any tempers in the Kremlin. Tempers already run short in a ruined nation that embarked on an unsuccessful attempt at reform, only to find out that–for a lot of Russians, at least–socialism is a better deal than whatever it is they’ve got now.

Which probably means that Russia isn’t a de-fanged lap-dog of the west. I’ll bet it’s the generals who really call the shots over there. Russia is likely to turn to its Soviet Union roots, and all this kissy huggy business with the west could fade quickly.

After all, Russians schooled in the Cold War and told that NATO was an imperialistic threat are probably realizing that the U.S. and NATO are, indeed, behaving in a decidedly imperialistic fashion. Back when Russia was a superpower, NATO couldn’t get away with such behavior.

Whether the Soviet bear is dead or just hibernating can be argued either way, but what can’t be argued is that the bruin has a tidy stash of over ten thousand or so nuclear bombs. That’s major ka-boom stuff, eh? It’s the geopolitical equivalent of a starving hobo sitting in the gutter with a .44 magnum. A war veteran hobo who had to pawn his medals for some hootch. A hobo with a wicked, mad-dog 20/20 hangover.

That’s not a gutter I’d care to step in, and yet the U.S. seems to be walking down a blind alley with all this European monkey business. Toothless peasants may soon prove to be the least of our worries.